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Executive wealth as a factor in return-to-office

• jmward01 2y ago
  It seems like these policies are more geared towards giving companies a way to fire people and avoid the consequences of that than they are around improving productivity.
• buttrburg3r 2y ago
  [dead]
• rybosome 2y ago
  I was at Google during their initial “return to office” mandate. During the TGIF (company all hands) discussing this, the architect of the policy, someone high up in the HR org, explained why it was necessary. I don’t recall what they said, but I do recall that they happened to be working remotely at the time, after the policy against remote work had already gone into effect. The brazenness of lecturing us on why remote work was harmful to Google while working remotely was shocking. Predictably, the internal anger over this was enormous. Rules for thee but not for me, some animals are more equal than others, etc.
  • kurthr 2y ago
    The Stanford Hospital Nurses strike was driven by similar dynamics. Nurses had to work overtime through the entire pandemic while executives literally phoned it in for years! They were shocked, shocked, to discover that there was anger and resentment. It was little surprise that more than half were showing up daily on picket lines as admin was apparently surprised that they couldn't find "travelers" to fill critical ICU roles, while surgeons continued scheduling elective surgeries. It's still the case that the HR executive officer resides in LA and that Payroll is managed (with financially catastrophic results) from Hawaii. Both discipline and scheduling are also done almost entirely remote. It would be hilarious if not for the effects on staff and patients.
    • cogman10 2y ago
      The nature of nursing is that you have to be in person. What HR did (and has been doing) is keeping the number of staff at a barebones level. They don't, for example, hire enough nurses that if one is out sick (during covid!) that there could be someone to cover the shift. They went so far as to only hire travel nurses (temps), who were commanding 100k+ salaries, when things got bad enough rather than filling a full time position. And, to add insult to injury, the nurses themselves have been getting salaries in the 30->50k range. So HR could have literally filled 2+ positions for the cost of a single travel nurse. That's what has lead to a nursing shortage and burnout. HR cost cutting because "we just need the minimum and no backups". It's a big part of the strikes. Believe it or not, many nurses and doctors working in healthcare actually care about their patients. Something HR is more than willing to exploit to get them to work ridiculous hours.
      • fjjjrjj 2y ago
        > Something HR is more than willing to exploit to get them to work ridiculous hours. HR works for management and the board.
      • kurthr 2y ago
        I thought I had seen businesses run by every conceivable group, founders, engineers, sales, marketing, finance... and then I saw a hospital and realized it was run by HR. Every "may" in a rule becomes "shall" since anything else could be perceived as preferential. It makes the lives of both supervisors and supervised hell. Only the spiteful or incompetent rise. Of course the "why" is driven by the greatest risk in healthcare. Where most income comes from insurance is stable, the real risk is being sued. Hence rises "there shall be no exceptions" HR rule based hegemony.
      • lostlogin 2y ago
        I’m in a different country and have different almost everything, but one thing is constant: nurses are treated like crap. I’m a radiographer and moaned to a colleague about the holdup I’d have with my 7am x-ray ward round in ICU. ‘The nurses are still doing handover at 8am, so won’t help and I can’t do anything.’ An older radiographer told me that the nurses stopped getting paid at 7am. The overtime they were working every single day after a night shift was all unpaid.
  • techpeach 2y ago
    I would imagine the logic from the HR director is something like “the reason you’re not as successful as me is you don’t know how to manage your time well”
    • toomuchtodo 2y ago
      A role worth replacing with Gemini.
      • xvilka 2y ago
        Most of the management, as well as bureaucracy could be substituted with AI for sure.
    • hyperhopper 2y ago
      Which is ironic because they manage our time for us to force us to have less of it.
  • alabastervlog 2y ago
    Fussell’s Class (1983) covers some of this. His upper-middle (in class—income tends to track with these social classes, but not always) are accustomed to very free lifestyles relative to, especially, the middle class (or the lower two tiers of his multifaceted “prole” class—the upper tier of that class does stuff like own successful plumbing or welding businesses, not work at Wal Mart or whatever) A major class marker distinguishing the upper-middle from the middle ends up being that the former are barely surveilled, largely free to set their own schedule, and basically are trusted to do the right thing (never mind that perfectly ordinary behavior patterns from them would be regarded as instantly fireable for others; it’s a different standard), while the middle gets constant status reports, return to office mandates, stricter start and stop times, maybe drug tests. (The actual upper class, of course, simply don’t meaningfully have managers at all) You know that older, expert manager everyone says is great that they bring in to run the business in the show Silicon Valley? Who spends a bunch of his time ignoring the place to breed horses or whatever, and seems to think that’s normal and fine? That’s this kind of thing. He doesn’t even get why that might be wrong, or why it might be shitty to take a big paycheck and ask hard work from others then fuck off to a rich-dude hobby half the time—that’s just what his kind of people do.
    • lostlogin 2y ago
      It’s funny how often Silicon Valley (the tv show) gets referenced. There are so many painfully accurate cliches.
    • PaulHoule 2y ago
      Class is a really great book, as is are most of the books that Paul Fussell wrote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Fussell
      • alabastervlog 2y ago
        I can't speak from personal experience to the accuracy of some of his characterizations, but he nailed the ones that (I now see) form parts of my background and are common in my family: various levels of "prole", plus "middle". It was really weird to see our quirks of behavior and taste (some of which I'd never have noticed if not for the book) dissected and analyzed that way, but fun and gave me new ways of looking at all of it. I've found his upper-middle and upper class descriptions constantly useful for deepening my insight into media, the news, work-life, and even history. Usually in small ways, but it's still pretty cool. Class markers are everywhere in media, and a lot of it I was surely noticing subconsciously, but being aware of them and able to point out many elements of them is a different experience. It's like seeing into the minds of the set designers, costume designers, and actors.
  • jumpman500 2y ago
    It's time to unionize. The top is out of touch and the valuations of these tech titans aren’t just staggering; they’re symptomatic of a system that values profit over people. These tycoons at the helm are not just steering companies—they’re puppeteering democracy, pushing political agendas that many of us find abhorrent and irrelevant to our lives. Unionization isn’t merely about better pay or working conditions; it’s about reclaiming power from this oligarchy that’s grown too powerful, too influential. The tech community needs to wake up and get these clowns in line, we could shut these companies down if we organize.
    • einszwei 2y ago
      Tech and Software adjacent professions have to be ones that are least likely to unionize. There was an internal survey (unofficial) at my workplace right after a mass layoff 2 years back about how many were interested in forming a union. There were 3 options - Interested, Not Sure and Against. The option with most votes was "Against". I could go into the reasons which were submitted in survey but in short most were related to hyper individualism that is so pervasive.
      • chrisweekly 2y ago
        Admitting in a survey that you're pro-union might be (rightly) perceived as high-risk, no reward.
        • smallmancontrov 2y ago
          Yes, but the hyper-individualism is very familiar. I wonder if the balance has changed since the 2022 wake-up call.
      • callc 2y ago
        Wow that really sounds like a captor killing a few captives and then asking the rest of the “ok, so who else wants to try to work together to escape?”
      • cmrdporcupine 2y ago
  • mjmsmith 2y ago
    This attitude seems more easily explained by the belief that, unlike you, the peons haven't earned their perks yet.
    • jumpman500 2y ago
      Yup, that's the problem. They view people as peons. Not people with lives, ambitions, family and friends. The only way to correct that view is to disobey.
  • mlinhares 2y ago
    It's a great reminder to tech people that they're still peasants.
    • AlwaysRock 2y ago
      The phrase temporarily embarrassed millionaires is even more true for tech workers than most Americans. Especially for any who have entrepreneurial dreams or who are at start-ups for the stock options. The carrot is right there...
      • SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
        It's literally true, even without dreams or stock option bets, that many tech workers are temporarily embarrassed millionaires. The source tweets are by an Amazon VP; an Amazon SWE salary with even moderately responsible spending is enough to retire as a multimillionaire.
        • recursivecaveat 2y ago
          I mean, the steinbeck quote is from 1960.. You will need probably ~$30 million dollars at retirement if you are 30yo today to retire as a 1960s millionaire.
          • SpicyLemonZest 2y ago
            The Steinbeck quote from the 1960s said "temporarily embarassed capitalist". Someone who has "entrepreneurial dreams" or is "at start-ups for the stock options", hoping to get wealthy through appreciation of their equity ownership, is unambiguously a capitalist. "Millionaire" was added in a 2004 misquote by Robert Wright, and $1 million in 2004 dollars is about $1.7 million in 2025 dollars.
      • loeg 2y ago
        The phrase originally means that the subject is not a millionaire and likely will never be one, whereas many of us in tech are already millionaires or very likely to become one if we work in industry for any amount of time. It took me about seven years in industry, starting from my first internship, to hit my first million. Non-FAANG and nothing magical happening with appreciating options or stock, just ordinary W-2 work.
  • switch007 2y ago
    HR are professional gaslighters and internal-PR masters. I'm not even surprised by their ability to twist things anymore
  • ein0p 2y ago
    As Laszlo Bock (head of HR at the time) quipped at TGIF when he announced Obamacare cuts to Google's healthcare coverage: "But hey, you get unlimited colonoscopies".
  • hyperhopper 2y ago
    It's more insidious than that. Being forced to RTO across the country, then immediately laid off after I uprooted my life to do so, all while knowing the layoffs were planned while they were telling me to move across the country, is fucked.
    • toomuchtodo 2y ago
      It’s happening because employers are desperate to get their power back while workers have no rights. It also makes it harder to leave an org, as orgs are also desperate to hold on to and develop existing talent due to forward looking working age population demographics. This is a desperate immune response. (also why employers are trying to staff up offices offshore in LATAM and India) Edit: @tbrownaw all of the responses to your inquiry are accurate.
      • tbrownaw 2y ago
        > It’s happening because employers are desperate to get their power back while workers have no rights. What does this mean in concrete terms? What useful power do they gain based on physical presence, and what rights are currently absent but coming (back?) soon?
        • scott_w 2y ago
          > Being forced to RTO across the country, then immediately laid off after I uprooted my life to do so Definitely power there if you know your staff have just uprooted their lives and now depend on you for their immediate term existence…
        • PantaloonFlames 2y ago
          The power in the market for labor. If remote labor is the norm, then every tech company has to compete with every other, across all geographies. If local labor is required, the employers can manage or restrict their competitive environment. There are fewer options for the employee. The bulk layoffs of the past couple of years have a similar effect - gaining power. It makes every employee a little more conscious that their employment is provisional and conditional. But I think RTO goes beyond just market power gains. There are many workers who are conscientious, attentive, and dedicated. For each one of those there are plenty who are just punching their time card. I’m no expert but it seems to me that RTO gives the employer and mid-level managers better visibility into all of that dynamic. But RTO fights against the reality that employers have constructed distributed teams, with people working from all over the globe on the same project. If that’s the case, what is the difference whether I work from my home office, or a hotel desk space in a big building alongside people I don’t know.?
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • grandempire 2y ago
    Imagine expecting equal treatment to higher ups who run your company. Anyone who told you otherwise lied to you. Set expectations accordingly and you won’t be disappointed.
    • rybosome 2y ago
      Imagine a very fat king standing before his starving populace, explaining why there would be even less food this winter as he munched on a turkey leg. I know executives have different rules and laws that govern them. But I can remember a time when they would’ve had the decency, shame or whatever else to attempt to obscure this. That HR VP could have come into the office for one day, the day that he was explaining his RTO mandate to the entire company. That he didn’t feel embarrassed about delivering this mandate while very visibly defying it himself is beyond differentiated treatment, it is open disdain for the (upper) working class.
      • grandempire 2y ago
        Proverbial kings are a fact of life. Use your circle of influence to ensure your concern is heard, but don’t set yourself up for disappointment when you find out they get better Christmas bonuses, time off, and cooler parties.
    • horns4lyfe 2y ago
      I would hope that they see people as people, but that’s clearly not the case
  • wnc3141 2y ago
    It's not about reciprocity or coherent rules. Its about power distance. "you work for me" sort of thing.
  • drstewart 2y ago
    lmao! It's the same as all the sysadmin folks at my organization who have a policy of locking down all our computers without admin rights whereas I noticed they DID have admin rights. Rules for thee but not for me, typical tech nerds.
    • __turbobrew__ 2y ago
      Somehow the people making policies always exempt themselves.
  • Velorivox 2y ago
    Also a recent Xoogler. There was a pretty popular thread where someone essentially ragequit due to being talked down to by someone in an all-hands, after having tried to resolve their issues with specific policies via other means. They took a principled stand, which seems exceedingly rare at Google. The main theme of their post was that engineering had become a second-class profession at a de-facto engineering firm. If I recall correctly, Steve Jobs had something to say about that very transition… Edit: By thread I mean internal Email thread at Google.
• giantg2 2y ago
  They aren't pushing it because they want to get back to the office or even dont understand the impacts. They're pushing it because they want more control over and accountability from their employees. Some even want a percentage of the employees to quit.
  • EncomLab 2y ago
    Your last point is the biggest driver - it is also why the rules are arbitrarily enforced.
    • wahnfrieden 2y ago
      It's useful to have most of your workforce (or other populations, as with police forces) in routine violation of unenforced rules so that one has cover for any individual persecution one finds convenient
      • chrisweekly 2y ago
        +1 Insightful. This dynamic is at play in every big company I've encountered in my 27 year career in tech.
      • kj4211cash 2y ago
        Exactly this. I've worked at a few places now where there were RTO policies that many workers ignored. But periodically low performers and/or people that had lost political battles were denied promotions or fired and their poor office attendance record was cited.
  • dividefuel 2y ago
    I think there are a lot of reasons, and forced attrition is definitely something they see as a benefit. However, I do genuinely think that a lot of them truly believe that working together in an office, face-to-face, is important. RTO is not just a cold calculation, but also reflective of their moral values towards work. Whether those values actually lead to a better company is the part that, I feel, continues to lack evidence.
• EncomLab 2y ago
  Not sure what the purpose is here - it reads more like a soft flex than anything else. We all know "why" RTO gets pushed - and it's not just that executives are living royal lives while the peasants are expected to stress over traffic while their kids wait abandoned at some public school. If anything, thinking that RTO is just about being disconnected highlights how disconnected the author actually is - because it is far more often the case that RTO is driven by tax incentives, rent incentives, and occupant use agreements than just some petty executive saying "let them commute!".
  • jalk 2y ago
    Can you elaborate on the tax/rent incentives, as it's not obvious what those are.
    • barbazoo 2y ago
      Same talk as RTO being driven by real estate investors’ influence. I have yet to see some numbers, evidence of this.
      • inetknght 2y ago
        Commercial real estate value is often estimated using number of people (feet) who go through the building. So for example, if you've got 500 people (customers) walking through your building plus 200 people (employees) doing things, then the restaurants and shipping stores and etc can estimate some % of those feet turning into sales. But if you've got only 300 people (customers) walking through your building plus 50 people (employees) doing things, that % of feet turning into sales goes waaaaaay down. And your retail outlets in the building end up with far fewer sales. They either go out of business or demand cheaper rent. That's just one way of estimating commercial real estate. Let's figure your attached parking garage. Assuming it's not-free, then all those employees not paying their parking dues ends up causing the parking garage to not generate revenue. Ooof. Or, let's say it's "free". Well, the people who reserved spots paid for those spots whether they use them or not. But the people who don't reserve spots? The business isn't seeing a return on investment if their employees aren't using them, so why pay their share for maintenance of that parking garage? What about the HVAC and plumbing? The building owner's son owns those businesses, and it's pretty damn expensive to keep HVAC and plumbing working at peak efficiency. It becomes a lot easier to do if they're not used as much! But your son's business is going to get churned if you don't pay them less for the decreased maintenance costs. And you can't just stop maintenance because those things get damned expensive when they're unmaintained. And the shipping staff? Well they have to come to the office anyway otherwise nothing gets shipped. It's not fair to those staff! You pay them complete shit, and they used to be able to eat lunch at a decent restaurant and have a decent place to park and have good air conditioning and working toilet. But now, with just everyone else being out of office, the restaurant went out of business and the HVAC is set to a wider range of climate and the toilet's been clogged for a while. Instead of paying the shipping staff something reasonable to offset their changes, or changing the way that lunch and support services are handled... just demand everyone else come to the office too. That's cheaper.
• NewJazz 2y ago
  We had an RTO mandate in the last year. Amongst our top 10 compensated employees, at least half were out of the office for the last three months (we go in one week per month). I tried not to freak out and catastrophize whent he rto mandate was first communicated. But the double standard has left me feeling deeply unsettled and bitter. And I just know one exec who has been on leave for months is going to roll back in and complain that his pet projects aren't coming along like he told the board they already had. He is oversees over half the technical folks and has very little technical skills of his own. I might bring champagne to work the day after he leaves.
• mccoyb 2y ago
  “Disconnected” feels like “has no empathy”. Is it really so hard to imagine the struggles of someone who doesn’t have any of the benefits listed in the post? Just sitting down and doing a quick calculation would immediately reveal time allocation dilemmas of prioritizing “return to office” for someone who doesn’t have the benefits. Time is universally valuable! But even more so for someone who … has significantly less of it because they can’t hire legions of staff to manage their lives? “What if I didn’t have this? How would that make me feel?” Pretty depressing. Empathy can’t run the business — but surely it is correlated with strong team cohesion and performance?
  • deleted 2y ago
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  • GuinansEyebrows 2y ago
    I mean we’re talking about a self-selected group of people who’ve chosen money over… nearly everything else. I do think it’s hard for them to empathize because nothing in their existence encourages them to do so. They’re richly rewarded for their choices and we all just go along with it.
  • techpeach 2y ago
    I think the problem is that like the business culture in the US is so cutthroat and stressful, and people generally so self-centered. That like, they literally can’t imagine a type of life or stress that isn’t solved by muscle through it or work more or whatever. You also end up in these bubbles where you literally can’t empathize with people because you have no experience to fall back on. Combine that with a sort of media and religious culture that will tell you you’re right to feel that way. I’ve hear rich people complain about the fact that rich people are people to, d that poor people don’t appreciate them enough. And actually, I think this is a common thread these days, that essentially the world’s problems are caused by the fact that rich people don’t have enough power and aren’t trusted enough by society. Marc Andreesen implied this in his Joe Rogan interview.
    • codr7 2y ago
      Have they ever claimed otherwise? It's not like they have a choice, gaslighting the general population is their only hope of staying on top/alive.
• mjburgess 2y ago
  The only issue here is that many of the employees in question can likewise afford a weekly cleaner, to have groceries delivered and cooked meals delivered regularly. They can also live close to the office if they wish. I think the issue is just that fundamental difference between what the work of relevant people comprises -- moreso than class. Managers, executives, and so on are "social workers": their job is to align people, brainstorm ideas, communicate, "govern" etc. "Knowledge workers" job is, in large part, to think alone, then to create alone -- and when that fails seek some minimal intervention by another knowledge worker to resolve an issue. "The Office" is not well-designed for knowledge work -- it's design for "social work". It's born of an era when manual workers worked in factories, and "social workers" worked in offices -- and "knowledge workers" were in academia, in the basement or some hidden (, silent) back office. Reducing this to class seems to miss the point. Will anyone ever just recognise what the job of creative knowledge work is? Is it so incomprehensible? In the quest to "comprehend" it, we're told its our lack of maids which burden us so. It's kinda laughable. A maid is no help if you won't STFU.
  • jack_riminton 2y ago
    This is really well put. Those who's main job is email, meetings and the occassional spreadsheet can't understand why those who do something technical must have significant time alone to work through a problem
    • mjburgess 2y ago
      HN seems to prefer treating this is a failure to empathise with home-life, rather than work-life. The almost rich are, as ever, incensed.
  • mananaysiempre 2y ago
    You unintentionally strike at the heart of why I’m never completely on board with these anti-office discussions. Commute sucks, cubicles are worse than useless; you won’t get any argument from me on either of these. But I also know how crucial it is for academia to talk with colleagues. Email kind of works. Video calls kind of work a bit more. But nothing beats knocking on the door of the office next to you. (Whether it’s polite to announce yourself by e.g. email first depends on the country; even if you just show up and you’re turned away, that’ll be until lunch or at worst until the next day.) And the post-seminar atmosphere of everybody talking chaotically to each other with their minds buzzing as others put away their papers, chairs, etc., thus far stays unreplicated by any technological means. I guess what I want to say is, the more speculative your ideas are, the more important it becomes to bounce them off people in spontaneous conversation. And any friction (scheduling, calls, etc.) you add will significantly reduce the amount of spontaneous conversation you are going to have. So far, we haven’t figured out a better way than roughly everybody involved being in roughly the same place roughly all the time. That saddens me, given how much I hate commuting.
• spacebanana7 2y ago
  I suspect many Return To Office programs are designed to be soft layoffs. Enterprises can remove a meaningful number of employees for whom it’s a dealbreaker issue without the associated redundancy costs or PR issues.
• dividefuel 2y ago
  This mirrors a lot of what I've suspected. Executives have a survivorship bias of a very work-focused life. It's hard for them to understand why anyone else would choose differently. This applies to both work location and number of hours per week. It's gotta be hard to understand and accept that lower-level workers have a different view and priorities from your own, especially when all your fellow execs share your own view. And, as the tweet says, at a certain level you can afford to offset all the negatives of work location / work hours. No commute. Personal chef. All household chores covered. Full time individual childcare. It's a lot easier to come into the office for 50-60 hours per week when you don't have to also spend your time outside the office trying to balance sleep and survival. But, again, that's not what life looks like for an average employee.
  • jajko 2y ago
    You are being too generous to that bunch of sociopaths (not snarky, just think for a second what kind of personality gets and thrives up there for decades). They care about their own profits, which are mostly bonus-based, and prestige. If they think they get any extra by appearing doing first and last thing that could drive up share price (or win some extra points in some meaningless internal battles), they will go for it. They are mostly pretty bad absent parents with laser focus on themselves and their careers only, and then it shows on kids. But in their mind nobody under them should be granted more.
    • bigyabai 2y ago
      Sadly, I agree. There is probably an element of "hard worker" survivorship bias at play, but there's also an undeniable profit motive that overrides a lot of those instincts too. After a certain number of years, handing your kids off to the babysitters so you can work an extra 10 hours a week becomes outright sociopathic neglect. Using your wealth to separate you from the things that actually matter is arguably the peak of corporate disillusionment.
      • rexpop 2y ago
        s/disillusionment/alienation
• Invictus0 2y ago
  People on HN love to pretend that no one was slacking off while ostensibly "working from home"
  • mercwear 2y ago
    Or maybe they just don’t feel like they need to state the obvious? We all know some people slack off, they find ways to do it in office too.
  • dboreham 2y ago
    That's an indication of poor management. People can slack off when in the office too.
    • SketchySeaBeast 2y ago
      Hell, I'd argue for knowledge professions it's required throughout the day. I cannot stay in the zone for 8 hours a day, so I'm going to need to take breaks. When I'm at home I can at least be productive. I can make lunch, start a load of laundry, something. At work I have to sit there and pretend to work because exec loves watching people work, which is ultimately not as refreshing and doesn't allow me to get back in the zone as quickly.
    • grandempire 2y ago
      Ok. So environment and social factors have no effect? Suddenly all these ideas from behavioral economics about implicit bias and contextual framing don’t apply, and we are now all Austrians studying rational and disciplined labor units.
  • dividefuel 2y ago
    At the same time, execs love to paint with a broad brush that everyone working from home is slacking off... while also not sharing any data about how many people are being lazy. Either your performance management can catch lazy employees or it can't. If it can't, then that's what you should be fixing.
  • watwut 2y ago
• barbazoo 2y ago
  > If you need to influence an executive where their experiences may be out of touch with your reality, help them see the impact through stories, videos, and data. > Remember, they live literally in another world. This doesn't necessarily make them evil, just disconnected. I do not want to be "out of touch" but it is important to acknowledge that this does happen over time. No they don’t. We all live in the same world and it’s everyone’s responsibility to realize that and our impact on those around us as well as our environment. The ruling class’ personality disorders (detaching from the common folk) are primarily their problems and should be dealt with by them, not worked around by us.
  • mccoyb 2y ago
    “Try and convince them that you’re not an animal” Depressingly laughable suggestion. Giving Jared (from Silicon Valley) suggesting “scream your name to your attacker so they are forced to recognize you are human” vibes.
  • Jcampuzano2 2y ago
    This is just an executive trying to gather sympathy for themselves, and make others "empathize" with their decisions. But it's sugarcoated. The only part that makes sense is the fact they are sociopaths who only care about work success. The rest of it is just sugarcoating the fact that they make these decisions because they simply couldn't give a shit what their peers below them think. They know it fucks with them and that they don't like it. It's not some "oh we don't understand cause we're too rich" sob story.
    • Ancalagon 2y ago
      agreed, thats the vibe I got from this story as well. like fuck off with that, the data and the vibes all point to it being better for the employees and their productivity to work from home. too many "I went through it so you have to as well" types that aren't interested in evolving stuck in their old ways
  • derektank 2y ago
    >We all live in the same world and it’s everyone’s responsibility to realize that and our impact on those around us as well as our environment. It is physically impossible to be aware of the entirety of one's impact on others. One might be able to dimly perceive how the person across from you is feeling about something you said or did, but even in simple one to one interactions, there's frequent miscommunication and signal loss. If you extend this to making decisions that have an impact on not just one but hundreds or thousands of people, it's literally impossible to know the true impact of all those decisions on all those people. Good decision makers will intentionally cultivate information flows that provide them some insight but those are themselves imperfect.
• moi2388 2y ago
  “ This is not a screed against executive wealth. After all, I paid with 25 years of my life and I got some of the wealth” Did the rest of the employees not do that as well though? Minus the wealth bit of course.
  • alex_suzuki 2y ago
    Yeah, I noticed that too. Strong „I worked so much harder than you“ vibes.
    • broadsidepicnic 2y ago
      That might be so but he did highlight that he put work ahead of the family > Most time goes to work, some to family. I do two jobs, but do that _because_ I prioritize family life: I do my main (not remote) work only part time because that can't be done remotely, and do a second job (consulting, 90% remotely) on off days to make up the difference. I don't care about the money as long as we make do.
  • ein0p 2y ago
    I wouldn't want those people's jobs tbh. You can't make every dollar, and they don't really have a life outside work. Fast forward to 60, you're retired and you haven't even lived yet. Sounds like a regrettable situation to be in even if you're rich - your youth is gone, everything hurts when you wake up, and your dick doesn't work anymore.
    • bsimpson 2y ago
      Part of how I coped with spending years at a big co underleveled and unaware of the ramifications was realizing that when I took vacation, I disappeared for months at a time. "K, I'm gonna be gone for ___. See you when I get back." As a low-level IC, your personal time is your own. I take time off when I want, fully disconnect, and nothing is completely on fire when I come back. There's maybe a year or two I eventually wouldn't have to work if I was more aggressive about going for promo, but I have no desire to be someone who's stressed about work, even when I'm not supposed to be working.
• miltonlost 2y ago
  Nah, disconnecting and then treating workers as if their outside lives and work lives are fungible is pretty evil.
• oldpersonintx 2y ago
  [dead]
• neofrommatrix 2y ago
  None of this is surprising. I wouldn’t say they are disconnected, unless they were already born with a silver spoon and have never had to live like the rest of us. I would say they know how it is for the rest of us, but just don’t care.
• VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  I enjoy working from home. But I'm not going to deny that it has had a catastrophic impact on the downtown business and commercial districts in many small and medium-sized cities. Those places stuggled badly with lockdown in general and a lot still have not recovered from the sudden societal shift where so many people just stay at home in the suburbs instead of coming into the office. I don't know what the answer is, and I certainly don't want to return to the office. But the outlook is bleak for a lot cities.
  • chasd00 2y ago
    Wouldn’t this be countered by the economic boon of the grocery stores and other places that are open where people actually live? In my neighborhood a couple of small eateries have opened up for the wfh crowd. I can get a decent sandwich and some chips to go for a reasonable price within a 20min walk from my home. Edit: coffee shops seems to be doing very well too
    • VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
      > countered by the economic boon of the grocery stores and other places that are open where people actually live While I think it's true that a lot of businesses have shifted to being more neighborhood-local and not relying on "business hours" to be sustainable, the reality for most suburban economies are that shopping centers and chain megastores basically absorb all the business. Places like Target, Whole Foods, Walmart are the ones that are primarily benefiting from this overnight migration outside of city centers. But that's been going on for a long time, COVID just accelerated it.
  • looping__lui 2y ago
    Maybe those were just artificial constructs that cost everyone a lot of money and we just started to realize now? “Hey let’s support these 30$ lunches at the food truck downtown.” Maybe we are as a society better off without these massive concrete structures that are only occupied 8h / 24h a day and serve no other purpose? Maybe requiring less resources and infrastructure to get people to and from other concrete structures that they only inhabit during the other part of the day is a good thing kind of?
• rglullis 2y ago
  "It would be hypocritical to talk about "executives" in general without owning my own situation first. For brevity, here are four examples: 1) No mortgage 2) A maid service cleans every two weeks 3) Someone else mows the grass " Just an anecdote, but all of his examples (except maybe for the personal assistant) could be given by anyone living in a middle-class family from Brazil until the late 90s.
  • maleldil 2y ago
    A Brazilian middle class family would have a maid working 10 hours per day.
    • rglullis 2y ago
      That, or she would live in with the family.
      • maleldil 2y ago
        I've never seen that in practice, but a maid working 10 hours per day 5/6 days per week was very common.
  • pkaye 2y ago
    2 and 3 is not too hard to be able to afford here in the US. 1 would depend on when you bought your house because prices have shot up a lot. But if you are a tech workers and got some RSU and bonuses it would be achievable.
    • rglullis 2y ago
      I was thinking more on the private school, personal drivers, multiple vacation homes and the things on the "level above".
• cowmix 2y ago
  About three years ago, when the major state university my wife worked for was starting its "return to office" push, the head of HR gave a Zoom town hall filled with condescending remarks. He said things like, "I don’t know why you all aren’t back in the office already..." and "I love going to the MU and chatting with students about their college experience." Keep in mind, COVID was still raging at this point. Right in the middle of his calm rant, a courier—UPS or Amazon, I think—knocked on his door, rang the bell, and then dropped off a package, loud and clear for everyone to hear. It was hilarious and completely undercut his entire message. Funny, but also infuriating.
• EPWN3D 2y ago
  I've been saying this since RTO became a thing. Even well-compensated white collar ICs have to deal with many of the same day-to-day realities as blue collar workers. They pay bills, have to wrangle the kids, etc. Yes they live more comfortably, but they still have to personally deal with all this stuff -- they don't have the money for a household staff. Remote work is just such a massive improvement in every respect for people with families for that reason. The executives are just on a different planet. These are people who embody Lucille Bluthe's quote "It's one banana Michael. How much can it cost, $10?"
• dotdi 2y ago
  I feel like this is a huge load of crap. These are highly intelligent people. They got to be very high up in the food chain. They are driven. They are smart. Yet, the claim is that they can't imagine there exist people not like themselves? Sorry, not buying it. More plausible to me is that remote work will hurt their bottom lines because they (and their superiors, investors, board members, etc) heavily invested in real estate. Means, motive and opportunity.
  • datavirtue 2y ago
    I invest primarily in REITs, avoiding those tied up in any significant amount of office space. Residential, industrial, medical and retail are easy picks over office buildings. The impact is real. Excutives are qualified as accredited investors and have access to private investments that are often tied to office space and other real estate that most people cannot participate in.
• mhh__ 2y ago
  I still would hate to be in the office every day by diktat but I honestly do think remote work can be pretty bad for the younger end of a company. Ignoring that its quite hard to learn from other people remotely (somewhat easier in tech because people are used to it), a lot of people frankly don't realise that they're basically running off like a headless chicken working on stuff that doesn't actually matter - programmers especially. You really do need to see the whites of some peoples eyes to get them to actually do the right thing, some people just aren't the type to instinctively know the macro picture of what they're working on. If I were running a company and had the cash to facilitate I think I would probably go for something like a cycle of "x weeks off 1 week of intense in-office sprinting" then repeat. Going into the office for no reason is basically pointless, or at least the option on spontaneity may be worth less than the cost of going, there's an arbitrage in recognising that.
  • mccoyb 2y ago
    Totally agree with this model, and I’ve seen it work. As usual, the best model is not an extreme “easy answer”, but a nuanced take (in-person environments have tangible benefits, but also tangible downsides — and the same for fully remote environments). It seems like our society (at least in the US) only has room for “easy answers” now a days … to the detriment of most.
  • hypothesis 2y ago
    > remote work can be pretty bad for the younger end of a company Not to worry, AI is going to rapidly solve this issue, according to tech CEOs that it.
• siliconc0w 2y ago
  It's very sad to me that we didn't seize and expand on this alternative vision for work. A commuting culture is quite terrible for society and there are many examples of successful remote-first teams. Worse, we don't get even get the benefits of working together because these group-thinkers also buy into outsourcing and so we commute into an office only to spend most of our day on video call with remote teams. Idiocracy.
  • danny_codes 2y ago
    Eh, I think the commuting negativity mostly stems from bad land use in America. Driving is wasteful, polluting, boring, dangerous, expensive, and just generally unpleasant. If we’d designed our society around walking/biking/transit people would be much happier. During Covid there was some surveys done on whether or not people missed their commute. People who walked or biked were very likely to say they missed commuting. Those who took transit were split (mild dislike), and those who drove nearly universally did not miss it. We built a pile of shit instead of functional urbanism in America and this is the result.
    • xvilka 2y ago
      Tokio (rush hours aside) is enjoyable for commuting and having lunch outside. Despite all that people and building density.
    • mystifyingpoi 2y ago
      Which doesn't make any sense, because people who walked or biked could just have done the same when working remotely - just turn around after 1/2 of distance to the office and go back home. Then repeat after work. They didn't miss the "commute to work", they missed the exercise and the internal soothing feeling, that they are doing something good for the health in spite of that trip being required to get the paycheck, and that it's not a total waste of time when done this way.
    • siliconc0w 2y ago
      Remote doesn't necessarily have to mean work-from-home either, corporations could provide hubs or co-working spaces that are walkable or bikeable. So they can still get the warm managerial feeling of seeing badge-ins on a dashboard while also moving as away from 2h commutes and sterile office parks.
• markus_zhang 2y ago
  Well the only thing to do is to lower productivity gradually and let them get used to it. Sure they can hire a new guy but it's not free either.
• 2OEH8eoCRo0 2y ago
  Why can't I WFH w/ a company VR headset that transports me to a virtual office yet?
• Jcampuzano2 2y ago
  Sorry but this is completely off base. Executives know what they are doing. They just don't care because it makes them more money. It depends on whether you consider that evil or not. But no, I do not take that they don't understand somehow because of their privilege. This is just another executive grift trying to make people feel better about them and the decisions they make. Stop the bullshit and say the quiet part out loud. They do not care what your employees have going on. They understand it fucks with people's work life balance and simply do not care.
• lr4444lr 2y ago
  I have been remotely working since 2020. There will be no return to office. The unspoken issue here is trust. Managers and execs at these RTO mandate companies do not trust that the rank and file are working productively when not monitored in office. Why else would they want to lose hours to commuting, and not take advantage of their employees living in cheaper CoL areas? Because they don't truly trust their work output when not monitored in person, and the cost of higher salaries to afford housing near the office plus lost hours and energy commuting are worth buying the trust they otherwise don't feel they have. It's dysfunctional, but it makes sense. I am glad to work in a high trust work environment. I have seen people who abuse the system get let go. They deserve it.
  • hyperhopper 2y ago
    > Why else would they want to lose hours to commuting, and not take advantage of their employees living in cheaper CoL areas? They abuse this and it definitely doesn't help the worker. As a Manhattan based worker who has lived in Aspen and Hawaii, Google wants to pay people in the higher COL areas of Aspen more than 30% less despite them being far more expensive than Aspen or Hawaii. They will fuck you with cost of living then if you expect more money they will say they are just following the cost of labor (which is a made up metric they can arbitrarily manipulate)
  • grandempire 2y ago
    > not take advantage of their employees living in cheaper CoL areas Because talent tends to be worse in those areas. (Inb4 I know someone really good in a low cost area)
    • antisthenes 2y ago
      You know people can move, right? I can move 20-30 miles in different directions within the same state that would land me in HCOL, MCOL and LCOL areas. Moving to any of these areas doesn't change my skill set to be better or worse.
      • grandempire 2y ago
• idkwhattocallme 2y ago
  RTO full time just isn't possible for my family and I suspect I'm not alone. It has nothing to do with productivity. It's just the economics of childcare don't work. We live in SF both work tech jobs. We make above median income relative to rest of the country. Our 2 kids (< 10 years old) are in public schools. Kids need to be dropped off at 9.30 and picked up at 3.30 and 2.30 on weds. The bare minimum for pickup/drop off help is ~ $2500 a month. Frankly I don't know how people are managing.
  • milesrout 2y ago
    Just do what 95% of people did before: one picks up and one drops off.
    • mystifyingpoi 2y ago
      What people did before was simple in my childhood case: your grandma/grandpa, who live downstairs in a multifamily home, drops you off or picks you up. How that's supposed to work with just 2 parents that work 8h/day - idk.
      • milesrout 2y ago
        Exactly how I just said? One picks up, one drops off. Not that hard, my parents managed it my whole childhood. And kids can make their own way to/from school after a few years.
        • deleted 2y ago
          [deleted]
        • asdf6969 2y ago
          Who gets to choose their own hours? This would get most people fired. You can’t just leave in the middle of the afternoon to spend an hour+ driving your kids around
          • 2y ago
• rwmj 2y ago
  https://xcancel.com/EthanEvansVP/status/1895845734177452369 https://xcancel.com/EthanEvansVP/status/1895845734177452369 Non-xitter link since that site hasn't worked in Firefox for quite a long time. It'd be nice if HN rewrote such URLs automatically.
• appleaday1 2y ago
  AUTOMATE HR AND RELATED MANAGEMENT NOW.
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  I think a lot of the return to office mandates are either meant to force people to quit, or to protect the value of real estate. With JP Morgan, they’re looking to protect the entire commercial real estate market since their business depends on it.
• jcgrillo 2y ago
  The same lack of context is what (I think, if I'm feeling charitable) makes these people think AI is real: If you spend your entire day in meetings, you might reasonably think that you'd be better off if all your meetings were face-to-face. If you only touch a computer to write and respond to emails, the email summary parrot might reasonably seem like some omniscient god. The trouble is I don't feel charitable. These people got to where they are by behaving like narcissists and sociopaths. That's because they are narcissists and sociopaths. It's about controlling other people and hurting them. Full stop.
• mschoch 2y ago
  [dead]
• the_gastropod 2y ago
  A few years back, I worked at a "unicorn" startup that also did the pandemic remote work thing, then tried reeling it back in 2022. I remember one of the SVP's explaining how reasonable the RTO policy was, even for those who—like her—had moved away from NYC. She simply rented an apartment a few blocks from the office—midtown Manhattan—and stayed there during the week. Like her, we just needed to make our own adjustments to accommodate the new policy. I'd seen "out of touch" before. But suggesting that everyone just get their own Pied-à-terre still pretty much takes the cake for degree of out of touch I've witnessed personally.
• datavirtue 2y ago
  All of this was known and built into the education of the elite wherein a sense of responsibility for upholding the overall prosperity of society was instilled. The fact that a post like this seems noteworthy is just an illustration that that sense of responsibility was lost. It seems like we have arrived full circle back to: "I got mine, fuck you." Lording, instead of leading. What we are really witnessing is law and order breaking down.
• gscott 2y ago
  Gary's economics, YouTube.
• mariusor 2y ago
  > This doesn't necessarily make them evil, just disconnected. No, no, that level of lack of awareness and empathy makes them straight up evil.
  • cosmotic 2y ago
    Another thing that makes them straight up evil is taking the value others produce as their own.
    • danny_codes 2y ago
      Comrade! I agree.
• IshKebab 2y ago
  There's another factor: their jobs are different. Obviously working in an office is advantageous if your entire jobs is meetings and talking to people. They're going to get frustrated when they are in the office and the people they want to talk to aren't there. But it's waaaay less useful if you are a worker bee just programming all day. Yes it's still better to talk to people next to a physical whiteboard, but it only matters very occasionally. My wife found it astounding that pre-covid I would sometimes go into the office and not really talk to anyone all day. Literally would just be sitting at a desk typing; the desk could have been anywhere. If you're somehow a FAAaaaang executive reading this, consider making RTO only mandatory for the people you directly manage and talk to, and then let them decide the policy for their subordinates.
  • nemo44x 2y ago
    So this is pretty much it in my opinion. Mangers collaborate with other managers and it’s much easier and effective to do this in person. A big part of the job is this. It’s how you align cross functionally and lots of serendipitous things occur because of this. It’s much easier to build the types of relationships you need to effectively lead. Individual contributors in many cases do not benefit from this. In fact it can be an active hindrance. An ICs contribution and performance is easily tracked and captured through the outputs and metrics they produce. I think the best organization will be one where leadership and managers spend a good deal of the week in the office. High ranking contributors (player coach managers, leads, etc) spend some so they can collaborate with other leads and leaders. And most ICs are optional.
    • kjkjadksj 2y ago
      easily the least productive days are when the team gets together for all hands. I'm sorry but people are going to schooze and dally and effectively write off that entire day from anything real getting done over the all hands meeting that takes up the bulk of the afternoon where like 2 people talk and everyone just looks at their inbox.
    • hackable_sand 2y ago
      > it’s much easier and effective to do this in person. People keep saying this but it's a preference, not a fact.
• efitz 2y ago
  If you want people to return to the office, then make the working conditions at the office desirable to return to. Yes, free meals, interesting spaces, massage rooms, etc are all great perks. But you’re there to work, and the reality is hoteling, no shred of privacy (need to have an ad hoc phone conversation with someone somewhere else? Good luck booking a phone room and walking 10min to get there). If you want people in the office, give them offices. Small, glass-walled, but acoustically private. And above all, assigned, so that you can personalize it a little and not mind sitting there for 8-12 hours.
• trey-jones 2y ago
  Marie Antoinette was "just disconnected" and look what happened to her.
  • okanat 2y ago
    They made sure that she stays disconnected.
    • jcgrillo 2y ago
      You might say airgapped
  • Tainnor 2y ago
    Yeah but that was also because she was a foreigner and people made up scandals around her.
    • dumbledoren 2y ago
      Her husband also got disconnected. A lot of French nobles who asked and collaborated with their foreign relatives to wage war on their people to repress them also got disconnected.
      • Tainnor 2y ago
        Sure and so did a bunch of innocent people as well as other revolutionaries, while other aristocrats survived. The killings were at times quite indiscriminate. My point was that Marie Antoinette wasn't particularly more detached than the aristocracy in general, that she bore almost no personal blame for the catastrophic situation before the revolution and that she was hated basically from the moment she came to France due largely to anti-Austrian sentiment. The vitriol to which she was subjected during the revolution was not exactly proportional to anything grounded in facts.
  • dumbledoren 2y ago
    Yep. People always think that the aristocracy of old was different. No, they were just normal people like anyone else who were just directly born into narcissist privilege and lived their lives out-of-touch right from their childhood on. The tech execs, investors, VCs, and shareholders have grown into the same narcissism after attaining that kind of privilege. With enough time in that privileged, disconnected, narcissistic world, they just develop the same behavior patterns and 'disconnect'. People criticize the French Revolution for the execution of nobility, but their level of disconnect was at a "Send letters to your foreign aristocrat relatives asking them to come to your country to massacre your people to put them in their place and collaborate with them to do that" level. Its amazing to see the disconnect of the modern nobility nearing those levels...
• willhslade 2y ago
  I see a lot of comments here, but what I don't see is anybody speaking the quiet part out loud. No judgment here to those who did, but during the pandemic, several people, including several software engineers, took the opportunity to work multiple jobs. Notably, at Equifax, which is probably the worst place to do it because they have records of most people's employment. https://www.businessinsider.com/equifax-used-itsproduct-to-fire-employees-working-two-jobs-2022-10 https://www.businessinsider.com/equifax-used-itsproduct-to-f... This is the main reason. Management doesn't want you pulling 2 salaries, even if you could, so they are trying to make it difficult so you don't even try. In addition, if WFH becomes normalized, there is a lot of debt floating office buildings in major cities, and there will be a great renegotiation. This is really bad for senior management, the stock market, transit systems and the budget of most cities. So most people that manage you and manage your managers are aligned against you. https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/real-estate/huge-midtown-office-building-sells-for-a-97-discount/ https://nypost.com/2024/08/02/real-estate/huge-midtown-offic... Lastly, and I'm only mentioning this because I think it needs to be said, but I think that most people who are pushing WFH are short sighted. If it is proved conclusively that software development can be managed and completed remotely, then it will devalue your labour as you are forced to compete with smart people in countries with significantly lower housing and energy costs. Anecdotally, this is already occurring.
  • iLoveOncall 2y ago
    > This is the main reason. No it's not. According to your own article, Equifax fired 24 out of 10,000 employees for working multiple jobs. That's 0.24% of their employees. This doesn't even come close to being a factor in their decision. > there is a lot of debt floating office buildings in major cities, and there will be a great renegotiation. This is really bad for senior management, the stock market, transit systems and the budget of most cities. Why is it bad for senior management, outside of senior management for commercial real estate? You think Google gives a flying fuck about the fact that there are empty buildings and that it's costing money to the few massive companies who own most of the commercial real estate in the US and in the world? No. Do you think the stock market cares? No. > If it is proved conclusively that software development can be managed and completed remotely, then it will devalue your labour as you are forced to compete with smart people in countries with significantly lower housing and energy costs. You say it yourself, "Anecdotally, this is already occurring", so why isn't it generalized? Why is there still ANY line of code written in the US or in western Europe? Because outsourcing simply doesn't work for the vast majority of software.
• astennumero 2y ago
  Another interesting aspect that is often ignored is the government's role in this situation. Increased footfall is beneficial for the economy. People generally spend more when they're outside than they would if they were at home. For example, one might choose to cook food rather than buy it when at home. Therefore, some governments are actively pushing corporations to bring people back to the office to revive the economy. I'm not exactly sure how I feel about this, though. On one hand, reviving the economy will have long-term benefits. On the other hand, forcing people to spend money is not ideal. Also, personally, I think we all grow and learn more about the world when we are in the world. You get to see and experience so many things while commuting, for example. I think it builds character.
  • phendrenad2 2y ago
    I'd like to see proof of government pressure for companies to RTO. In theory it seems likely, but it would be lovely to have a smoking gun to enter into evidence in the court of public opinion. DM me (joking, HN doesn't have DMs).
  • dguest 2y ago
    This is an interesting case of the "revive the economy" argument. If you really don't see a benefit, to you or your employer, to returning to work, you are being forced to waste money (spending implies you get something out of it). More generously, it's a tax where the benefits go to your local Subway or gas station (or maybe bistro and public transit). There are probably lots of other ways to force people to waste money, so this raises two questions: - Is a larger GDP an unequivocally good thing if you get there by raising people's baseline expenses? - Are the parts of the economy you are stimulating the ones we want to see growing? I don't know the answer in either case. But in the later case, I know a lot of people who work in carpentry and delivery apps, and since the pandemic they have made an absolute killing: the work-from-home mandate invigorated that part of the economy like nothing before. P.S. I agree with your personal point about leaving home. I like going in to the office too: my office is about 20 minutes away by bike and it's nice to get some air. I'm not sure if applies to people who have a less healthy or refreshing commute.
  • n3t 2y ago
• orblivion 2y ago
  It's kind of funny, when execs talk about employees feeling entitled to working remotely, I think that's a fair thing to criticize. We all earn our salaries and our perks, the market determines how much companies will put up with remote work (and how many employees even want it). But since 2020, the market has swayed a lot in favor of remote work compared to before (though it seems to sway back and forth since then). And the way some of these execs talk about it, they say we're all spoiled and we need to put back into the offices where we belong. They're the ones with the self entitled attitude, not respecting the market.
• tonnydourado 2y ago
  > They're not evil, just out of touch Kinda hard to see the difference. I, too, live in a completely different world than people with much less money than me, but I can still conceive that they can't have a cleaner twice a month, order food every other day, or use uber more often than public transportation. I wouldn't even consider making a decision that impacts people's lives without having at least an inkling of how they actually live.
  • mystifyingpoi 2y ago
    That's why I like that I have 0 friends in tech and all of my friends reside outside this bubble. Like, recently someone asked me for help, because he didn't have enough money to pay the taxes. Like holy crap, this is unthinkable in tech, but totally normal outside.
• JackFr 2y ago
  When I plead with my direct reports to please comply with the company policy of in the office 3 days a week, and I am deluged with a flood of complaints, I suppose sometimes I’m less empathetic than I might be. It’s not because I’m rich. I am not. I don’t own a home nor do I retain any personal assistants. I’m less empathetic than I might be because I came into the office 5 days a week for 30 years. My wife also worked. We raised three kids. I went to night school. It’s all very doable, and honestly not that hard. Now I understand that technology has changed circumstances, and what was not technologically feasible 30 years ago is easy today. But with respect to empathy, most of the commenters here could bear to examine, if only just for a minute, the idea that the executives are acting in good faith, and just trying to run the company effectively and efficiently.
  • g-nair 2y ago
    I haven’t been working for nearly as long - coming up on 7 years here. I enjoy going into the office because I enjoy spending time with my team - they’re all really cool! However, I find a good analogy for RTO to be the case of student loan forgiveness. Just because one individual had to pay their own tuition or student loans off, doesn’t mean that individual should wish that all future students share the same fate. Just because you worked in an office for 30 years and it was manageable, or just because I like coming in for social reasons, need not result in our scorn for those who thrive by not coming into an office.
    • milesrout 2y ago
      Student loan forgiveness is using taxpayer money to pay off the loans of a huge number of people with good jobs and plenty of money. You chose to borrow that money. Borrow. It wasn't a gift. The idea that people are only against student loan forgiveness because they paid off their own loans and think others should share in their suffering or something is absurd. It is nothing to do with that at all. It is because you are stealing to give money to people that do not need it. If talk of student loan forgiveness were limited to people with very limited incomes with no hope of ever paying off their loans, it would be one thing. But it is in reality about a massive transfer of wealth to people with degrees: people with plenty of earning capacity already. >Just because you worked in an office for 30 years and it was manageable, or just because I like coming in for social reasons, need not result in our scorn for those who thrive by not coming into an office. The persom you replied to didn't say RTO was good because he worked in the office for 30 years. He said he had limited sympathy for that reason. I am sure his reason for imploring his team to RTO is that he recognises that people do two thirds of fuck all at home.
• danny_codes 2y ago
  The fundamental irony is that CEOs + execs are easy to replace at most orgs. Their compensation comes from nepotism and capitalism, not from any inherent capability. Hopefully I’ll live to see the end of the rotten scourge that is Capitalism. One can dream.
  • dumbledoren 2y ago
    Yes, they are like chancellors, castellans to the feudal lords who own the fief. They are even more vicious than the lord himself because their employment depends on that viciousness. Not that the lords would not be equally vicious if they ran the show.
• TacticalCoder 2y ago
  [dead]
• stego-tech 2y ago
  I did exactly what this exec advocated - using hard data and statistics to paint a picture of what these mandates look like from a worker perspective - and was roundly shot down. I ended up painting a picture that, when considering just the costs of vehicular wear and tear, associated insurance costs, added food costs, lost time commuting, and lost economic opportunity in housing choice, that it would end up being approximately equivalent to a $30,000 USD pay cut (primarily due to housing and vehicle costs to preserve the existing commute, rather than searching further afield with a hybrid or remote schedule). I also added that, for the technology teams in particular, our follow-the-sun support model meant we were all incredibly scattered about anyway with no real colleagues in our local office to network with. The response was to double-down: those outside of "hubs" were increasingly passed over for promotions and growth opportunities, hubs started enforcing mandatory in-office days (dictated by the VP), and - of course - the company's promise to support minority colleagues was effectively compromised to "encourage" relocation to Texas. It wasn't really surprising when I got RIFed, just incredibly disappointing. Data alone is not enough to sway these people. They have their own agendas that have no concern for their workers' needs or goals. The solution will be collective action, rather than bargaining for basic empathy.
  • jimt1234 2y ago
    > Data alone is not enough to sway these people. True. And, they have their own data that says workers love RTO. My company sends out employee surveys every six months. They claim that employees who work-from-the-office have higher workplace satisfaction scores, and therefore working-from-the-office must be better - the data proves it!
    • codr7 2y ago
      Finally, a good use for those pesky surveys that no one answers, I'm pretty sure the goal from the start was to generate cover for whatever policies they feel like enforcing.
      • NAHWheatCracker 2y ago
        At the last place I worked I assiduously filled out those surveys. Twice a year the executives would do an all hands meeting and talk about the result of the recent survey. They would make a big deal out of all the changes they were making. After a few cycles, I noticed that the top problems from the surveys always stayed the same. Then I noticed that the changes they were claiming to make were either half-hearted or were gross misinterpretations of survey results to push their own agendas. Of course the survey results stayed the same, nothing was done to address the problems. After I noticed this, I still filled out the survey, if only because they would track me down and tell me the complete the survey (wait, I thought this was anonymous...). One year I answered 5/5 on every question. The next year I answered 0/5 on every question. The next year I quit.
• voidhorse 2y ago
  This goes deeper than just RTO. The current, growing rift stems from increasing recognition that: 1. Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. Your dependency on others is extremely high, no matter where you sit in society. 2. We posses the technological means to realize a restructuring of labor and society, one which would benefit a large swath of people across several dimensions —remote work was just an existence proof of this—beyond that, we actually have the infrastructure and technical capacity to solve many societal problems that are being artificially maintained at this stage in history. 3. Different members of society have different incentives, and some benefit much more significantly from existing labor structure and organization than others. Often, these benefits are derived in direct opposition to realizing the net benefits possible in (2.) (see: modern healthcare in the united states). Remote work during covid was a crack in the glass. External factors forced the C-suite and their ilk to make concessions that showed that the current labor structure is antiquated and that it persists mostly for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. The psychopathy of the executives lies in their desire to make this structure persist. RTO mandates are an irrational attempt to brute-force rollback the tiny bit of power they gave up to the masses during covid. CEOs are evil. They are evil because they perpetuate a system of labor that increases inequality and puts most people under unnecessary duress because of an artificially imposed scarcity. It is not a "difference in lifestyle" that makes this class of people repulsive. It is their continual and persistent attempts to preserve a structure that demeans and subjugates human beings. They do this actively, and effectively by spreading "free-market" propaganda and continually steering the conversation away from the realization of a more equitable society, which is already technologically feasible.
  • milesrout 2y ago
    Your way of looking at things is fundamentally broken. You will never understand society or other people if your analysis is that we could transform society with technology but we choose not to because... some people are just evil and don't want to. The reality is that remote work meant a massive drop in productivity. It sucks if you are one of the few that is equally or more productive at home than at work. If you are, then you are few and far between. Most people working from home do sweet FA. Everyone knows this and everyone talked about it constantly for all of the WFH period right until they were asked to work from the office again. >The psychopathy of the executives lies in their desire to make this structure persist. RTO mandates are an irrational attempt to brute-force rollback the tiny bit of power they gave up to the masses during covid. CEOs are evil. They are evil because they perpetuate a system of labor that increases inequality and puts most people under unnecessary duress because of an artificially imposed scarcity. You are either insane or you have completely swallowed some source of propaganda. Evil? Artificial scarcity? System of labour? Do you even hear yourself? Take a step back from the computer, stop listening to podcasts and just think for yourself. Or if this is you thinking for yourself, find someone else to do your thinking for you, because you're not good at it.
• wesselbindt 2y ago
  They're not out of touch. They know. They don't care.
• phendrenad2 2y ago
  They may be out-of-touch but they understand when someone takes their money. And my message to tech CEOs is: if you want in-office, pay more. Or you will lose your company and your PJ and your golf club membership and your kids will go to public school in a big yellow bus built in 1982 with no seatbelts. You won't even be able to shift over to a successful company, because the companies will speak exclusively Chinese. The future of the western tech industry is in your hands, I hope you're smart enough to make the right choice.
• farts_mckensy 2y ago
  Replace these fucking assholes with AI.
• simonswords82 2y ago
  Good on this guy for having the courage to be honest about his circumstances. Still, shitty that this is the situation.
• newsclues 2y ago
  Contrast both: minimum wage, lengthy bus commute, workday that exceeds 8 hours, limited or no weekends or vacation. People that never had a remote work option because they work production or service jobs that are tied to the workplace.
• bvanderveen 2y ago
  OP mentions housekeeping as part of his benefits. I also have had an every-other-week maid service for the past decade or so, and for me, it is a huge lifestyle improvement. The amount of time and cognitive overhead it saves is enormous. I have paid less than $200/mo for this. In terms of cost, this isn't anything like having a nanny, your house paid off, or retiring at age 50. But it's interesting that for this guy, it's on the same list as those things. In sum: I highly recommend deploying a couple hundred bucks a month to pay someone to do house chores if you have a hard time motivating yourself to do it or have housemates/partners you have to spend time arguing about it with.
• Apreche 2y ago
  Right on all counts except one. It DOES necessarily make them evil.
• tennisflyi 2y ago
  What irks me is when said from rank and file it’s just bitching. But when said from the c-suite it’s godsend
• from-nibly 2y ago
  These kinds of tweets miss the point. It's not about returning to the office. It's about reducing labor costs. It's about having a thing that shows you are trying harder (the anime kind where it just makes you win for no reason) to show to your investors. Nothing in private equity or public companies is done for the purpose of making the company better. It's for making the company look like it will do better in the future, so that a bigger fool will hold the bag. Don't try to rationalize the irrational, that only serves to promote the myth that they are trying to do something we just don't understand. It's called misdirection.
• corytheboyd 2y ago
  We are already very painfully aware of the hyper rich being out of touch. This reads like rich guy A saying it’s actually rich guys B and C who are the problem. Maybe this is frustrating for people like the author to hear, because clearly they have good intent with this message, but I’m sorry, the only way I will ever perceive someone who received a 9082% pay increase is as another criminal destroying the world that I live in. I am a complete hypocrite though, because of course I would say yes to a 9082% pay increase, like most/all people would. The price of being this wealthy is exile from plebeian society. Sorry you have to be rich?
• davesque 2y ago
  > This is not a screed against executive wealth. After all, I paid with 25 years of my life and I got some of the wealth. That's the point though isn't it? He retired at 50. Most of us will work to at least age 65 (perhaps until we literally can't work anymore in today's economy). And we won't get some of the wealth.
• BrenBarn 2y ago
  Ironically one of the clearest signals of being out of touch is feeling that your noticing how out of touch you are is noteworthy. It's like "Gosh, I'm rich! How interesting!" > This is not a screed against executive wealth. And that again shows how out of touch he still is. You haven't fully accepted how out-of-touch wealthy you are until you've made the decision to actively oppose allowing anyone to reach that situation.
• lowbloodsugar 2y ago
  The rich own real estate around the office buildings. They want their REITs to go up not down. It’s a company town even if they did away with scrip.
• loxodrome 2y ago
  [flagged]
• dpc_01234 2y ago
  If you're getting a private jet funded for your work, maybe it's your responsibility not to be out of touch. If you're a manager, maybe it's your responsibility to figure out who's slacking and who's productive.
• horns4lyfe 2y ago
  It’s not because they’re in a bubble, it’s because they hate you. If they could get rid of you and maintain the same revenue, then they would make more money and that’s the only thing that resonates. They hate you, and you should hate them right back.
• dmitrygr 2y ago
  Every recruiter who reaches out with non-remote jobs gets the same answer: "i am not currently taking any companies that demand i waste my time on a commute seriously". Many reply and tell me that they get this a lot from the more senior people they want to hire. Usually they also complain that their hands are tied.
• alsoforgotmypwd 2y ago
  Chris Hedges recently interviewed Catherine Liu, the author of Virtue Hoarders: The Case against the Professional Managerial Class. They are a mostly invisible spectrum of plutocratic aristocracy who essentially replaced the middle class and gained immense wealth, power, and sense of entitlement.
• wooger 2y ago
  Ultra rich execs are out of touch sure, but equally so, middle aged people with houses, families, long commutes to the suburbs are out of touch with younger people who might've relocated to a city for their first / second job out of university, don't have social networks of friends and family nearby, and desperately need to be in the same office as older experienced staff to learn from them. They also don't have space or even privacy to work from home every day in a shared flat. Remote working also doesn't suit some people at all, and their productivity went of the cliff during COVID and the big shift to remote / hybrid. If you don't see, socialise and really get to know your colleagues multiple times a week it's really hard for some people to see them as real people and care about how the job they're doing (or slacking off) affects others.
• deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
• kermatt 2y ago
  > This doesn't necessarily make them evil, just disconnected. If you are very highly compensated, responsible for people's ability to earn what they need to survive, and don't care enough to understand your employee's perspectives and realities, you some definition of evil. Responsibility is the key word here.
• OfficeChad 2y ago
  [dead]
• etruong42 2y ago
  In terms of the disconnect between executives and society, the elephant in the room here is society's approval of CEO, father, husband Brian Thompson's cold-blooded murder. The disconnect goes way beyond disagreements about RTO.
• garfieldnate 2y ago
  >Remember, they live literally in another world. One of my favorite sociology books is about rich people practically living in a different country, Richistan.